Cecilia BEAUX (1855-1942) ✿

Cecilia BEAUX (Philadelphia, 1855 - Gloucester, 1942) was an American painter, Portraitist, she was an authoritative exponent of American Impressionism. She went on to study in Paris, strongly influenced by two classical painters Tony Robert-Fleury and William-Adolphe Bouguereau, who avoided avant-garde movements. In turn, she resisted impressionism and cubism, remaining a strongly individual figurative artist.

Her style, however, invited comparisons with John Singer Sargent; at one exhibition, Bernard Berenson joked that her paintings were the best Sargents in the room. She could flatter her subjects without artifice, and showed great insight into character. Like her instructor William Sartain, she believed there was a connection between physical characteristics and behavioral traits.

Beaux became the first woman teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She was awarded a gold medal for lifetime achievement by the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and honoured by Eleanor Roosevelt as "the American woman who had made the greatest contribution to the culture of the world".

She was awarded a prize for The Last Days of Infancy, also known as Les Derniers jours d’enfance, in 1884. In 1887, while still living in the United States, she sent the painting to the Salon des Artistes Français in Paris. The favourable reception of her painting led her to travel to France in 1888 and 1889. In Paris she attended classes at the Académie Julian (she presented herself as a student of MM. W. Sartain, Bouguereau and T. Robert-Fleury in the booklet of the 1889 Salon des Artistes Français) and Académie Colarossi, but did not hide her dissatisfaction with their teachings. Back in Philadelphia she started a successful career as a portrait artist.